Christ Church Cathedral Evensong

The thought for today is a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote, "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church."
                                                                                                                                                           Hello everyone!  I am half way through the 5th week!  Can you believe it?

Last Sunday night, I went to the Evensong Service at Christ Church College Cathedral.  The music was just beautiful!  As I walked out, I heard someone say "Mae Ann!"  I turned around and it was Anna Thornton from Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville!  Then out came Gif and their 4 kids!  We were all so happy to see each other.  They were on an English vacation with their family and Oxford was on their travel itinerary.  They were just as surprised to see me and find out what I was up to!

This week we are being hosted and taught by Stuart McAllister and Os Guinness.  Stuart serves as North American Regional Director and VP of Training at RZIM's headquarters in Atlanta.  He was born in Scotland.  He has served the Lord at Operation Mobilization, European Evangelical Alliance and the European Lausanne Committee.  Os Guinness has written or edited more than 25 books.  He is a social critic, who is a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics.  He was born in China where his parents were missionaries.  He received his D. Phil in the social sciences from Oriel College, Oxford.  He resides in Virginia.

We have had an intensive week so far!  I only have time to list the topics of discussion for you tonight:

1.  Globalization and the Gospel
2.  Spiritual Discipline of Solitude
3.  Postmodernism
4.  Jesus in a World of Cynics
5.  Nietzche
6.  The Saturated Self
7.  The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
8.  Using Film in Evangelism
9.  The Rationality of the Christian Faith
10 Suffering

We all had a lovely night out together at the well known restaurant The Trout.  Tomorrow our group will visit C. S. Lewis's homeplace, the Kilns.

Davis arrived on Monday night after class.  He is on his way to Dublin, Ireland to premier his film, Good Piping on Sunday, July 1.  He is putting the final touches on his film and will be heading on over to Ireland on Saturday.  We are having a good time experiencing Oxford together inbetween his editing and my classes.

David arrives on Friday, the 29th!  We will be attending together the RZIM Europe's Summer School for 1 week at Queen's College in Oxford.  Next week also makes up the 6th week of training for my group of 10.  The summer school has about 120 people coming in for an intensive week of exploring contemporary issues that challenge the Christian faith.  More on this later!

Take care and love to all,

Mae Ann